Meanwhile, with controversial plans to send appeal boards to ‘exile’ (in Haar) already materialised, the final part — this one about BoA — comes out of Thorsten Bausch as part of his 4-installment series. Some people at IP Kat have already taken note, as did SUEPO. Bausch says that “TBA 3.3.02 now seems to be completely dysfunctional, with only one technical member left.” So if the person is ill, there is not even anyone to acknowledge communications. Here are some of the relevant passages from Bausch:

TBA 3.3.02 now seems to be completely dysfunctional, with only one technical member left.

[...]

To be fair to the EPO management, the number of legal BoA members slightly increased in 2016, but this does little, if anything, to solve the problem since usually the technical members act as juges rapporteurs in opposition appeal cases and draft the decisions.

One should expect a competent Office President to take decisive action against the BoAs’ serious understaffing, yet in lieu of that the President seems to be obsessed by the idea that the problem can be tackled by “measures to increase efficiency” (whatever this may mean), including the appointment of a new President of the Boards of Appeal and (again) amended Rules of Procedure…

One reader recently told us: “I’ve heard the words “lame duck” being used about Battistelli (should he not decide to prolong his reign). Considering what’s going on at the EPO right now and which plans are in store that’s a naive assumption. If there was no method to the EPO madness engulfing the office now it appears there’s some method, and this is to run it down at full power.

Treating the staff like assembly line workers. In August there will be introduced ID access cards able to register the time of entry in and exit from the office in order to control the effective time spent at work. It’s only that each examiner has a yearly production to achieve so checking whether he’s done this in less or more of the 8 hour 45 min time seems to be useless. Could a patent attorney imagine his working day being [like this]?

The issue of mega-directorates. Battistelli and his HR brains have thought that one could cut down on the directors by merging directorates and having 60 people under one director. Thus a saving of more than 1/3 or the directors could be achieved (leaving roughly 70 out of over 100). The work of a director will then be delegated to team leaders who will do a director’s job for merely some hundreds of EUR a month, non-pensionable.

3-year contracts for newcomers starting next year. Undoubtedly there will be candidates for any job in the world but will the EPO still recruit the best candidates when they know that their job doesn’t involve any certainty? Anybody leaving the office after a cycle of three years, be it three or a multiple of three, will certainly consider the lack of a wide range of jobs, like in any other position on the market. It’s going to [be tough as] patent attorney and starting from the bottom, or nothing.

Early certainty for the examination. Was commented before by a patent attorney so we have the voice of a user who’s far from pleased with the idea. What it means for the examiners is that more and more fields are suffering from lack of applications so the examiners are doing only examination and rarely any searches, just waiting for files that so far don’t arrive. If things continue like this, in spite of the huge success [trumpeted by Battistelli], many examiners will remain without enough work. What is the conclusion? Mass firings and replacement by novices under 3-year contracts seem to be the logical step. That this should also entail a lower quality does not seem to bother Battistelli and his henchmen. They already got through their bonus…

A Single Comment

It gets more and more difficult for the EPO to hire workers, because more and more people realise that the EPO is a bad career move. The biggest problem is that, in case one wants to leave, there is nowhere else to go. Once an engineer has worked in patents for a few years, it is very difficult to be hired to do a normal engineering job any more, so it will be patents for the rest of your professional life. And there aren’t that many patent offices hiring, so the only choice would be to be patent attorney, but it’s already a bit full.
Strangely enough, the UPC is not hiring examiners. I don’t know who is supposed to do the litigation work (if the UPS happens, which is unlikely of course).
Maybe the plan is to simply accept the search an examination of other major offices? That would indeed cut the number of examiners and attorneys needed worldwide by a factor of 4-5.
As to bad career move: there was also the regulation that examiners cannot work in a 2 years grace period after they left (or have been fired). This was not accepted by the council, but it seems that Battistelli cannot accept no for an answer. I have been told by 3 different people now that it was extremely difficult to get a certificate that they worked for the EPO after they left. Without the certificate, no EQE and job interviews are a bit awkward.

What Else is New

Torvalds and others who are middle-aged (or older) males are often torpedoed using weakly-backed allegations (or insinuations/innuendo) of sexism; that does not seem to matter and won't matter when they treat men the same (or worse)

Linus Torvalds was not fully canceled; nor was Richard Stallman, who's still heading the GNU Project (under conditions specified by those looking to oust him; people who code for Microsoft GitHub and many IBM employees)

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Board of Red Hat, explains (keynote in 2011 Red Hat Summit/JBoss World) that he was introduced to the system as part of a military campaign; it basically helped war, not antiwar

Techrights examines Red Hat’s (IBM’s) hypocritical claims about the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman back when IBM was the “big scary monopolist”; IBM employees were prominent among those pushing to oust Stallman from the GNU Project, which he founded, as well

The (in)famous letter against Richard Stallman (RMS), which was signed by many Red Hat employees with Microsoft (GitHub) accounts, doesn’t look particularly good in light of recent revelations/findings; it increasingly looks like IBM simply wants Microsoft-hosted and “permissively” licensed stuff, just like another project it announced yesterday and another that it promoted yesterday

One might not expect this from a so-called 'charity'; the Gates Foundation's critics are often met with unprecedented aggression, threats and retribution, which make one wonder if it's really a charity or a greedy cult of personalities (Bill and Melinda)

The assault on the media by Bill Gates is a subject not often explored by the media (maybe because a lot of it is already bribed by him); but we're beginning to gather new and important evidence that explains how critics are muzzled (even fired) and critical pieces spiked, never to see the light of day anywhere

Microsoft buying GitHub does not demonstrate that Microsoft loves Open Source (GitHub is not Open Source and may never be) but that it loves monopoly and coercion (what GitHub is all about and why it must be rejected)

The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps granting fake patents that cause a lot of real harm (examiners are pressured to play along and participate in this unlawful agenda); nobody is happy except those who profit from needless, frivolous lawsuits

After contributing to the cancellation of Richard Stallman (RMS) based on some falsehoods perpetuated in the media we're seeing the sort of thing one might expect from IBM (more so now that it totally controls Fedora and RHEL)

The coup to remove (or remove power from) Stallman and Torvalds, the GNU and Linux founders respectively, is followed by outsourcing of their work to Microsoft’s newly-acquired monopoly (GitHub) and appointment of Microsoft workers or Microsoft-friendly people, shoehorning them into top roles under the disingenuous guise of "professionalism"